About the Author

Michael Beyer is a former high school and middle school English teacher and author of the novels Aeroquest, Catch a Falling Star, Magical Miss Morgan, and Snow Babies. He was born and raised in Iowa and now lives in Carrollton, Texas with his family. After 31 years as a classroom teacher, he retired in May of 2014.

Some things I should probably warn you about with this author;

He wanted to be a cartoonist when he was young, and now there is a cartoonist personality that lives in his head right along with his real personality. The cartoonist personality looks something like this;

The cowboy version of Mickey exists because Mickey was a cowboy for 23 years, a Cotulla Cowboy. And because that was the team nickname for the school, and because he taught seventh graders long enough to acquire severe brain damage, he thinks he’s a real cowboy and thinks he looks like this;

3. Mickey also talks about himself in the third person, a type of mental condition we don’t really have a name for yet. Further study of the issue is required.

4. Mickey also spent time working as an ESL teacher (English as a Second Language) at Naaman Forest High School in Garland, Texas. So now he is misunderstood in at least seven different languages.

5. I should also probably give you a look at what he looks like if his face were to be on a wanted poster. It is useful to know what sort of people to avoid at all costs. So a photo of the goof follows;

The best advice I ever got from a principal (and it’s rare that they know anything more than you do) was, “Learn to love ugly. Students come with problems, warts, and unsightly behaviors… but they still need someone to care.”

U.S. teachers are underpaid. The reason I know this? One part of my career life, I was the Financial person in a few school districts – so I saw salary comparisons all the time. This fact actually bothers me!

My mother, also a teacher, would have concurred wholeheartedly, Michael. And we used to laugh over the fact that she mostly remembered the naughty students.

I guess I’m not in on the joke. My novel Catch a Falling Star is not even the only novel by that name. There are at least two others.
I named it after the John Donne poem, “Go and Catch a Falling Star”.

Wow, thirty-three! I reached thirty-one this year and must now retire or drop dead of stress in front of the whole class. I love teaching, but the “what death by stress looks like” lesson is not one I want to teach. I hope you have as many wonderful memories as I do.

I love your post and share your love for the writers I find here on WordPress. I don’t know how many times I have been rescued from the “Blues” or the “Downs” or the “Bitter Clowns of Depression” by something I read in the comments or on a blog post. May Love and Life and Laughter find you always.

Yes, and thank you for following my blog too. I should warn you though… My blog is pretty goofy and I am told there is a danger that reading it too often could cause flowers to spontaneously sprout in your sock drawer. I haven’t figured out the physics of that yet, but it’s what they tell me.

Well I’m glad you found my blog, I”m not the humorist you are but I do try to lace some of my posts with an underlying humor. Being a teacher myself I think we need to keep our sanity this way. Anyway will be back now and again when I need my ribs cracked.

Whoa! Cracked ribs? I’m hoping that’s a reference to food like brisket. I’d rather believe my humor can cook a rack of pork ribs than that it can break human bones. I know my puns are brutally bad, but I never suspected that they are potentially lethal.

We’ve got all our paperwork in a row (ie a big envelope) ready to post off tomorrow by recorded delivery. I’ve even numbered the copies so that they can identify them on a check list! Of course i could offer to go and show them just how to use their tick lists………… 🙂 🙂